The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of December 26, 2020

Saturday:  Is your favorite someone lamenting that she didn’t get that space-related calendar that she wanted? Are you sad that you ran out of money and can’t fulfill her last-minute wish? Do you wish you could spend more quality time with her? Worry not. NASA has an English and Spanish language calendar available for free download at https://eospso.nasa.gov/publications/25.  (Scroll down past the still linked-to 2020 calendar. Or, horrify your favorite someone into thinking that 2020 is happening again.) Spend many hours reading about NASA scientists and projects.

Sunday: Did you get a new telescope for Christmas? The next item on your list should be a sky watching app for your phone. These apps will help you to get familiar with the constellations and bright stars. Then you can zoom in to an area of interest and learn about objects that are visible through your telescope. I like SkySafari, a free or low cost iPhones app (depending on their promotions at the time). But there are many other good ones to choose from for little or no money. Go to https://goo.gl/t1DX7R for fifteen short reviews. The first object you should look at is Mars. It is bright, easy to find, and high in the early evening sky so you can share the experience with children. Mars is five fists above due south at 7:00 p.m.

Monday: Jupiter and Saturn and still close together in the early evening sky, one fist held upright and at arm’s length above due southwest at 5:00 p.m. Jupiter is one pinky-width to the upper left of Saturn. Mars is four and a half fists above due southeast at this time.

Tuesday: Venus is about a half a fist above the southeastern horizon at 7:00 a.m.

Wednesday: Most constellations don’t look like the object their name refers to. That’s because most constellations don’t have such a simple object to emulate as Triangulum does. Triangulum is shaped like a… wait for it…. wait for it…. A thin isosceles triangle. Metallah is the only mononymous star in the constellation. In Latin this star is called Caput Trianguli, the head of the triangle. Triangulum is seven fists above due south at 7:30 p.m. It is pointing down and to the right with Metallah being the southernmost star at this time of night. The Triangulum Galaxy can be seen with binoculars about half a fist to the right of Metallah.

Thursday: It’s a beautiful day in our solar neighborhood. We know that because the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission just published the third edition of its star catalog, an ultra-precise overview of the position of the nearest nearly two billion stars. While you wait to get your COVID-19 vaccine, take a virtual walk through your celestial neighborhood with some friends by going to https://youtu.be/BknZ2YxegIk.

Friday: Today is the day we celebrate the anniversary of something new – a new classification of celestial objects. Giuseppe Piazzi discovered Ceres [pronounced sear’-ease], the first of what are now called “asteroids”, on January 1, 1801. Ceres is the largest asteroid in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. At first, Piazzi thought it was a star that didn’t show up on his charts. But, he noted its position changed with respect to the background stars from night to night. This indicated to him that it had to be orbiting the Sun. The International Astronomical Union promoted Ceres to the status of “dwarf planet” in August of 2006.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week. For up to date information about the night sky, go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.